I work at Infowest, Utah's second largest Internet service provider, where I am a server administrator and webmaster. I frequently handle customer service questions, especially when our technicians are indisposed on other phone calls. I have frequently received calls like this one:
             Caller: Why can't I access the web site www.cnn.com? My browser says it is blocked!
             LM: Do you subscribe to our XStop service?
             LM: Let me check the site. (I check the CNN web site for any reason why our censorship service would be blocking it... I find nothing questionable on the site.) The XStop service must be malfunctioning right now. I'll call them and tell them about the error and get back to you. Can I get your number?
             I'm amazed how many times I get calls like this, caused by Internet censorship failure, usually when the service censors something it shouldn't. But, of course, I shouldn't be surprised: There are many technical problems with Internet censorship. First of all the manpower and money needed to keep an accurate and up-to-date database of questionable sites, as most censorship firms do, are tremendous. The second problem is the lack of accurate content filtering software, especially on the client side. Also, the internet is multinational, and uses many protocols, languages that computers use to talk to each other and "negotiate" data exchanges, making it nearly impossible to police the entirety of the network. Lastly, there is the issue of data encryption, which makes censorship of encrypted data impossible.
             The way the XStop service works is supposed to solve one of the major problems with Internet censorship software, namely the lack of manpower to keep up the database of questionable sites. The XStop service allows any user who finds a questionable site that isn't in the database to add that site to the database, with little or no review of the submission by anyone at XStop. This sche...